Sorry it is so long, but quite interesting I think.
Willingness to violenceit has been said in recent days that 10 years after 9/11 we can put fear behind us, Cultural Psychologist Kirsten Damgaard thinks otherwise. Read her in-depth analysis of Muslim terrorists.
According to the Intelligence Services analysis the next 9/11 can easily hit Denmark. Therefore it must be considered qualitatively why young men in Denmark on their own initiative, seek out jihad.
Why do they not a have a psychological barrier against performing death violence but, as has been pointed out by terror researcher Lars Erslev Andersen, Danish Institute for International Studies, accept outsourced terrorist tasks?
The accused and convicted in the Danish terror cases the Glostrup, Vollsmose and the Glasvej case have their Islamic ideology in common. How do the children of Muslim parents who have immigrated to the country of the world's happiest people, and who are already part of the society, become its attackers with hatred of democracy and intellectual freedom?
Are our homegrown terrorists perhaps mentally ill? The terrorists themselves talk about humiliation, loneliness, envy, rage and resentment.
What is called evil, however, is always rooted in a series of individual psychological and social processes. The known terrorists' personality is deviating, yes, but they generally do not merit a psychiatric diagnosis.
Fundamentalist thinking and readiness to commit fatal violence against unknown innocents is associated with a perversion of normal psychological processes.
Borderline personalities and narcissistic personalities have in common that they view people and events in black / white, their anger is immature and egocentric, and they have a capacity for fanatical devotion emphasized the Danish professor of psychology Gretty Mirdal in an article on terrorists.
Generally, the holy warriors cannot be said to be unintelligent, but there are probably thought processes they do not master. We will come back to that.
The U.S. terrorism researcher Marc Sageman studied 172 Islamist terrorists, and they were actually better educated than the average in the sub-culture they came from!
There was an overrepresentation of the "exact" sciences subjects, and only very few with a humanistic or social sciences education. Before the terror, these people, however, underachieved in the form of unemployment in relation to their education and perceived abilities.
Islam is attitudesDogmas of Islamism are, among other things, that Muslims constitute one nation (Ummah), that is to say one people. Jews and Christians must recognize the Muslims as their masters. Islam is the true and natural religion in which every act has religious value.
There is no secular state that can oblige Muslims to act in a certain way. The law (Sharia) must be adhered to.
Is such a religious state the goal of the holy warriors or do they simply want to liberate "Muslim territories" outside of Europe from Western influence? In which light are we to understand that the West is being bombed by Muslims born among us ?
The Swedish security police have identified 200 violence ready Islamist extremists. A third of those willing jihadists were born and raised in Sweden.
It is a fact that political death violence in the Nordic region, with one exception, has been planned by Muslims. Religion obligates and therefore too much and too strong religion provide good prerequisites for fanaticism and war.
Religion shapes the self It is important to understand what religion does to the psyche. An individual's cognition, thinking and learning is mediated through the experience of others for example through cultural codes and systems of knowledge.
In this way religions and cultures act as information processing programs
"controlling" perceptions and behavior. When controlling is in quotes, it is obviously because the psyche also possesses the ability to self-organize and thus organize itself individual-specifically, so we're not talking determinism here.
The role of religion is also to create narratives, and these narratives help to shape the neural network. Religion historian Michael Rothstein explains that the imprint of religion first and foremost is a question of attitudes to life and relationships with other people. You learn what to believe.
You learn what to do. And you learn how - and what - you must experience. The educator quite naturally includes the child in the understanding of reality that he/she has.
Aggressive countercultureHoly warriors who have been interviewed in connection with a very lengthy research project are described as humiliated, lonely and angry. Anger is actually a healthy normal reaction. However, most psychologists do not consider hatred and violent aggression mentally healthy reactions in people over the age of puberty.
But have Western psychology thought of what is normal in violence and threat cultures which also always are cultures where shame and honor are very important?
Men who live in honor-based cultures are notoriously timid, suspicious, jealous and angry state gender researchers in the Middle East and North Africa.
The American Psychological researcher Donald S. Dutton has for a long time studied men who use violence to achieve their goals. In short, he found three recurring features: a precarious attachment to the mother, borderline traits and reactions to trauma.
When a mother (primary caregiver) does not meet the infant's needs, the child will not be able to attach itself to the mother, and it will soon suffer damages. A child damaged early in life feels no self-esteem and cannot show confidence.
Such a developmental disorder cannot be repaired later in life, so it causes a very serious mental disability when the mother is not present physically or mentally to meet the child's real needs.
The starting point for developing a personal morality, which is not just exterior parroting, is thus based on the attachment of the infant. The individual's moral development is a determining factor when it comes to whether one can be persuaded to go to Jyllands-Posten's editorial offices to tie up people with strips with the deliberate intention to cut the throats of as many innocents as possible within 20 minutes, or whether you threaten Danish politicians with violence.
It is imperative to find out why so many boys from Muslim communities from an early age develop a counter culture, as described by school principals. Men who use violence to achieve their goals have had difficulties, in the way their life has shaped itself, to achieve recognition and hence self-esteem, says western psychological theory.
For immigrants it is that the two cultures they grow up in do not always have values and view of humans in common. As to the understanding of personal identity - the "who am I" - it is very difficult, probably impossible, to reach, if the individual does not have a clear understanding of its collective identity, that is to say, its affiliation.
If, for example,in the environment you are excluded from perceiving yourself as both a Muslim and a Dane, it brings the individual who wants to belong to both entities, in a dilemma that the self must solve.
One must therefore assume that children, who are by the homes pressured to adopt a worldview that differs greatly from Danish middle-class norm, are vulnerable in their personality development.
Islamic moral theory assumes that the child has the right thing in it from birth. It is thus an act of will to do what Allah wants, which the law (Sharia) prescribes. The fact that there is no proper ethics in Islam - just a lot of dogma and a catalog of orders, regulations and prohibitions, makes it much harder for children and adolescents growing up in Denmark.
They must try to carve out what psychologists call a navigation channel between the Danish humanist and the contrasted submissive Islamic set of ideas about the ideal way of living life and a way to relate. Children in immigrant Muslim families are rarely socialized to develop the autonomous identity that is needed to achieve recognition and to function well in a modern society.
When you are also brought up in a collective culture, it can feel like a personal offence when the culture, symbols and ideas of the immigrants are not accepted. If the experience as well is that the Danes consider Islam as backward and treat the ideology contemptuously, humiliation and anger may build up.
Many young people will be in a dilemma between Western and Islamic norms. But since it is confusing and anxiety provoking to rebel against the caregivers (family), it also appears that the anger against the vice of tradition that the parents keep the young people in, is directed toward freedom and also against the messenger of the choice, i.e. the Danish ways and the Danes. Internal maladjustment and immaturity (narcissism) is projected out of the body and away from the individual onto a case (chosen trauma).
Instead of shame and humiliation the individual can now feel powerful and vigorous. The story is familiar: Palestinians are oppressed - all Muslims suffer - Jews and Americans must be fought so that happiness and comfort can be experienced, etc.
Islam promotes violenceThe German-Turkish Muslim sociologist Necla Kelek, has presented the theory in her book Die Verlorenen Soehne (The lost sons) that Islamic religiosity creates violence propensity. She does this on basis of a large German study showing that young Muslims, who are religious, are less well integrated into society than non-religious Muslims.
They are more likely to engage in violence, and they have fewer German friends. The Study includes 44,000 youth aged 15years in Lower Saxony. 70 per cent of the young Muslims are very religious or religious, and 40 per cent have a dogmatic approach to Islam. 40 per cent of the young people think that Islam is more important than democracy, and 37 per cent believe that Sharia law should apply to Muslims in Europe.
The German study also showed that non-Muslim immigrants are better integrated than Muslims, which of course is a recurrent experience in the countries concerned.
Another German scientist sociologist, Professor Ulrike Ackermann points out, that it has been statistically established that there is a correlation between a strong religious Arab-patriarchal environment on the one hand and violence propensity on the other.
CountercultureIn traditional culture, the law equals morale. You must do what the law says, and thereby become a moralist. But the written laws and unwritten discourses are always manmade.
When people consider the laws as the god's will both the motivation and the mental capacity for change are severely hampered. There is no tradition for the simultaneous existence of diverging ideas in the Islamic environments.
Conflicts of interests and dissent are not recognized as legitimate, one side must be valid and exclude the other. Dialogue, understood as having the purpose of adjusting ones ideas after a Socratic conversation, leading to both parties becoming wiser does not exist. Nor does the political concept of compromise, because the truth must and will be right every time.
Everywhere in the European cities with concentrations of Muslims there are anti-democratic and anti-individualistic parallel societies where intimidation and violence is used to solve conflicts.
It's a counterculture with little joy and much discouragement, where the feeling of victimhood thrives. It is linked to a pre-modern culture where the law is always designed so that certain people's interests are favoured more than others, some are allowed to exploit others.
"The body's own passionate interests are not administered as considerately" as psychologist Erik Schultz says. An environment that is incompatible with basic human needs such as security and trust, constitutes a "deficit logic" and impacts children and young people's general development negatively.
Four young men had last year finished plans for attacks on Americans in Germany. Just as they were kneading explosives together the jihadists were taken red handed. Nevertheless, the four claim themselves to be religious, but not violent!
In Germany, judges are nonplussed and have been "unable to find the human reasons why young people from well-established families, let themselves be deceived by religious fanatics and travel into the madness of terrorism."
Who says that the young people have been deceived? The judges are looking for answers in the wrong place. Researcher Manni Crone from the Danish Institute for International Studies has just pointed out that the young men seek out the recruitment for jihad themselves! They have surfed around between Muslim communities until they found the extreme. And there they met others who are also willing to commit violence and destruction.
Where does the rage come from?The key factor in the personality development is occurring long before the terrorist looks for accomplices to a quartet that will plant suicide bombs in British and Spanish trains.
If you want to understand the psyche of a terrorist, one must begin with the small child, to see how fanaticism and readiness for violence become part of the self.
How is his cognitive development, that is, the status and progress of knowledge, thinking and learning? How is his emotional development? How has his relationships with others been developed? Etc.
In order to reach a personal morality that is not an uncritically accepted ideology requires a certain cognitive development. To recognize, analyze and learn require social interaction with adults who answer questions and discuss.
Along with their own brain processes, the concrete experience of the adults' way of being form a level of insight, analysis and learning, which is a prerequisite for developing a personal morality. It happens in the West around 11years of age.
The question for the young is then, whom he may choose to imitate and later perhaps identify with? Children and young people grow up and internalize the culture they live in. Here the family is of primary importance and the surrounding community is only secondary. There is much violence, oppression and claims of authority and hierarchy without the corresponding knowledge or proficiency, especially among male members of Muslim families.
Of course it may create frustration, poor self-esteem and anger in those being subjugated especially young men. The local Muslim cultures whether in Denmark, Holland, Sweden or Great Britain are characterized by a combination of Islamic values and the respective tribal cultures: Religion has a central place, the socializing is repressive, patriarchy rules and traditionalism dominates creativity.
Formation is understood as a mentality that keeps tradition alive. Many will probably think, that culture is dynamic, and people form culture, so the parents may just change that if they want to, at least in their own families. But it's all concepts, which 1st generation immigrants in particular have difficulty changing because few of them have developed the mental tools which come from a well developed written language.
The parents of the young Arab and Pakistani men of the counterculture have often remained illiterate. The illiterate with a traditional and authoritarian worldview, has with his concrete thinking, difficulty in abstract, logical, hypothetical and syllogistic reasoning with many balls in the air simultaneously.
However, many parents of 2nd generation immigrants have not just themselves difficulties structuring and analyzing quite as well as others, but the illiterate, who mentally has not entered modernity, passes on to his descendants as a social legacy the lack of reflection and incomplete personal attitude toward existential issues.
We know that part of the Arab terrorists were trained as engineers in Germany and that there were Muslim doctors involved in terrorism in Britain and the U.S.
However, it happens quite frequently, that individuals achieve the level of formal operational thinking in areas such as engineering and technology, but for example have difficulties with formal operational thinking in areas such as religion and patriotism. Danish counselors have noticed exactly this kind of difficulties with descendants from traditional families.
It is difficult for these young people to analyze, argue and problem solve in disciplines requiring interpretation - and relativising - while subjects based on memorizing, repetition, and established procedures do not cause the student the same trouble. The phenomenon is probably not due to inherent lack of intelligence, but to a culturally structured brain.
The Brain and ThinkingSeveral of the captured terrorists are so young that their brains are often not fully developed. The conditions under which their thinking has had to evolve has a major impact on the logical and moral thinking, they are capable of. An individual can only be expected to have an adult analysis preparedness and be able to think abstractly and logically prospectively at 25 years of age.
Precisely because the terrorists themselves report feeling a lot of humiliation, envy and resentment, while on the other hand they blame and dehumanize "others" their emotional life while growing up should be more in focus in the terrorism research.
The extremely radicalized have the tendency to a selective attitude towards facts and to see all causal explanations outside themselves. And since they see themselves as victims, they cannot even be guilty, when they "justifiably" strike back!
The ability to manage ambivalence has never been cultivated. Socializing to handle reflexivity vis-a-vis their own actions and recognition of responsibility is weak. The fanatics live in a paranoid-schizoid position without normal cognition and thinking in certain areas.
Some subscribe to conspiracy theories and misjudge their own actions and significance. They cultivate a grandiose past or plan a powerful future.
Social anthropologist Aje Carlbom in Sweden has studied the young extremists after they had organized themselves in groups that supported jihad. He has observed that the extremely radicalized have a selective way of relating to facts, likewise the gray areas disappear for them in their evaluations. By Western standards this indicates an immature personality.
From the way people in the culture relate to disappointment, anger and unpleasant phenomena, some thinkers with Middle Eastern backgrounds, such as the philosopher Daryush Shayegan (recipient of the Global Dialogue Prize, 2010 Aarhus University) think that immaturity is fed with the breast milk. Thus "immaturity" (in Western psychological terminology) becomes a part of the prevailing social character.
Terror recognized"The martyr elevates himself" claims the defected Islamic terrorist Walid Shoebat. He explains that an overlooked person who lacks meaningfulness and recognition, can slowly be transformed into a hero by performing acts of terrorism.
By claiming moral superiority and performing his antisocial destructive acts in the name of Islam the terrorist achieves respectful recognition from his surroundings. It requires, culturally speaking, an environment that recognizes terrorism as an instrument! It would seem to indicate a double life: The families at any rate often indicate astonishment at what sonny has had going.
But it may also indicate, that the sons vicariously manifest a "legitimate hatred" on behalf of the family/group. Often, however, the extremists distance themselves from the values of those they claim to represent as many of "their own" do not share their goals and means.
From research on holy war, there are different visions of what might create a terrorist born in a peaceful Europe. It is young men who want action and excitement, and want to be the best, says the Danish researcher Manni Crone, who has spoken with people in Denmark charged with terrorism.
"They are Muslims and they support jihad," she observes. But Crone does not assume that they are especially religious, they do not read the sacred texts in a marked degree, she says. But perhaps they listen to the Islamic television preachers, or to self selected authorities on the iPod and DVD? (Self-Selected because of Sunni Islam, as we know, has no clergy, nor any official hierarchy of fatwa-issuers).
On top of the fatal disappointments in early childhood, the building of the counter-identity and resentment of the Danish society with the individual once again feeling that he is not being seen, heard or respected. The Muhammad cartoons, the blonde at the disco or the school's admission criteria provoke him.
His legitimate claims, in his view, have not been met. He becomes angry. Psychologically speaking, it is initially easier to become angry. You put the problem outside yourself, it is "the other's fault", and thus you do not need to use mental energy on reflection. The poor self-esteem is not enhanced and as a bonus, you feel no guilt when you are angry.
Guilt plays, on the other hand, a different role in Middle Eastern Muslim identity that is linked to the relative truth concept, but if one believes in Allah, one believes, that the God sees everything. Anger provides a sense of power and empowerment. Accumulated anger can be bundled together into a conviction of a guilty party, which may be a person, structure or state.
The guilty party provokes and the mockery / rejection / exploitation / discrimination, etc., has to stop, so that the terrorist can feel comfortable and at ease. The guilty must be punished. The Palestinians are suffering, Afghans are suffering, the Iraqis are suffering ... "as long as my brothers suffer, I suffer too" is the feeling.
Home educationHow big a role does socialization in the family play in what the educators and others describe as "a very short fuse" with relatively many young Muslim men? What is perceived as provocative, how the person reacts to it, and how they act to eliminate the stimulus are all culturally shaped.
Each culture has its own logic and each individual has his assessment basis. It is self-evident that intelligence (very hereditary) and temperament (inherited) play a role in the choice of action and reaction.
The role of parents is, among other things, to teach the child to act appropriately to its feelings, and help it to gain adequate experience, and to become reflective. Quite early in life it is one of the parents' tasks to teach the child to comfort himself when experiencing disappointments.
Through life you experience disappointments en masse, which preferably should not lodge in the psyche as unresolved anger. What happens when children are socialized in an honor culture where mockery, humiliation and punishment are common tools in the upbringing? According to Western psychological theory fewer healthy individuals will be the result when parenting consists of shaming, threats and violence.
When young people in ghettos throughout Europe require respect and recognition, could their demands and accusations be directed at others than the native population and the Western society? Many - especially girls - are doing very well with training and jobs. Have the terrorists also sung the song demanding respect, getting recognition and being respected before becoming radical?
Presumably the boys' demands for respect is in reality a highlighting of subjective and socially constructed problems to being an individual and belonging in both a collectivist and an individual culture. The youngsters are in a serious schism in relation to getting the authoritarian Islamic educational ideal fit with the free humanist individuality.
It is very difficult to be educated to be a moralist, and having to operate in ethics, democracy is largely mentality!
We know that, young people generally are ignited by injustice. The dogma of all Muslims togetherness, forming one global nation (umma) - one people - that transcend nationality and ethnic categories, also means that Muslim youth feel a completely different universal community than seen, where f.inst. Buddhists, Hindus and Christians are concerned.
Something similar, however, has historically been observed among the comrades in communism. When Muslim descendants very much see their identity as being Muslim, a rejection of non-Muslims follows. Many describe themselves first as Muslims and then as Pakistani / Moroccan / Turkish - even with a Danish citizenship!
The distancing from the native non-Muslims is almost a built-in identification as a Muslim and an internalization of the concept of the umma idea. A recent Danish-language book (recently purchased from a so-called moderate imam, the convert, Abdul Wahid Pedersen) requires for instance that the infidels are to be hated for Allah's sake.
The British social anthropologist Pnina Werbner, who has studied ethnic Pakistanis in British cities, talk about self-separation, that is, withdrawal from the majority community. This occurs when the chain-immigrant groups of Pakistanis are big enough and have established themselves in the host country (read also about Yummies: Young Urban Muslim with Education ). Muslim children who never spend time with Danish children is a sign of this self-sufficiency.
It is my evaluation. that self-sufficiency is part of the social nature in the majority of the Muslim immigrant population, Danish citizen or not.
Happy with weaponsNot all of Europe's homegrown terrorists who refer to themselves as servants of Allah in the cause of Islam, have been raised as Muslims. Approx. 25 per cent are converts, and they have probably had a less than stable childhood.
Uncertainty in childhood is a general characteristic of such converts, f. inst. divorced parents, each with its own philosophy of life, or in addition a criminal career, as documented in France.
For individuals in the gray zone in need of recognition, the Islamist teachers firm guidance on right and wrong, and Allah's total forgiveness to reverts (which we term converts), must appear extremely convenient!
Manni Crone, from her research, sees the terrorists as young men who want "action". The violent radicalized also want to be "the best" and to "make a difference."
Wanting to be super clever, do something exciting and be significant for the lives of others you might well become an NGO in a developing country or a sports coach? But they will definitely not become boy scouts and weapons are attractive to them.
Making a difference for these young men often has to take place abroad because in Denmark they have the Police Intelligence Service breathing down their neck, as Manni Crone explains. Apparently Crone sees Jihadisme as a form of youth rebellion, that is something that relates to common development.
The researcher does not relate more in depth to the pathological anger and has either no eye for or neglect knowledge of mental deviations.
Nobody can feel safe in violent cultures. The feeling of entitlement that many teachers, police officers and educators report, characterize the mentality of many ghetto-boys and this mentality is of course not met with respect from a lot of Danish adults, or from the girls they want contact with.
The lack of recognition for the way to be masculine, may easily lead to frustrated outwardly directed negative behavior in individuals whose assessment basis is poorly developed.
Everyone has - depending on environment and intelligence - the means to regulate their knowledge and hence their behavior. The choices a person makes, is an extension of his identity.
New experiences will offer new justifications and hence new ways of being "me". It is integrated in human nature that if the child is socialized by institutions and environments that dehumanize other people, then it is just a cultural development for groups to gather and develop a culture of violence.
Violent young people filled with hate is a loss for all parties except the Islamists.
Kirsten Damgaard, cultural psychologist
http://www.sappho.dk/villighed-til-vold.htm
Topic: What makes a terrorist ?